Will of Fire, thy name is Hollow
by cerozeros
Summary: It's not like there's a guidebook for how to live the life of a missing-nin, he thinks, perhaps just a bit hysterically. Then he realizes that that sounds like something Obito might have said were he in Kakashi's shoes, and wonders if he's letting his ghosts get too close. No pairings, missing-nin!Kakashi. (NOT ABANDONED I PROMISE, HAVE HOPE)
1. Cowardice

He doesn't quite scream when he bolts out of bed, but it's a near thing.

Understandably, Kakashi is a little disoriented when he is greeted with the chirps of Konoha's native birds instead of the screaming of the Chidori that pierced its way into Rin's chest. He looks down at his clenched hands, all pale skin and throbbing veins, and finds that they're clean of his teammate's blood. Even so, he mechanically steps his way into the bathroom to scrub at his hands for a bit.

 _Her blood on my hands,_ he thinks wearily, _like the Uchiha's on Itachi's._

But it's been years since Rin's death, and only a few weeks since the massacre. He wonders briefly if Itachi takes the time to wash the blood of his kin from his hands every morning.

He turns off the water and stares at himself in the mirror—not in vanity, but in order to observe the cracks in his mask that have been forming since Kannabi Bridge and never stopped spreading. He looks at his reflection, and hates the shell that stares back at him with death in his eyes.

It's a sudden realization, but unsurprising, and he momentarily relapses into a furious cycle of hate for this village. This village, that took his father from him. This village, that is the root of all his loss. This village, that he can not save.

He's so lost in his inner turmoil of hate and grief and mourning—things that came back with a vengeance after the massacre—that he doesn't even realize he's packing his bags until his sleeve gets caught on the pack's strap. Kakashi freezes, two sealing scrolls in one hand and some leftover rations in the other, and wonders, _What am I doing?_

He thinks of how disappointed Sensei, Rin, and Obito would be—especially Obito, who would be cursing his name to hell for even thinking of abandoning his comrades, his friends. But the ringing in his ears reminds him of the screams of everyone he's ever killed, and he decides that this village doesn't need another broken killer. This village doesn't need him, because it has no use for someone who couldn't save his friends, his sensei, a lost boy's family.

And he's fully aware that doing this, throwing away everything his father lost his reputation and his life for and abandoning everything his team ever taught him, makes him the worst kind of trash and a selfish coward at that, but he just doesn't have anything left to lose. So he packs everything he can possibly fit in his backpack, locks his door one last time, and flees from the village full of ghosts.

* * *

11 days later, he's declared a missing nin. Kirigakure's bingo books aren't the only ones his name is listed in anymore.

* * *

Kakashi takes off his headband as soon as Konoha's out of sight and seals his resolve by taking a kunai to his now former village's symbol. He swipes an unassuming eyepatch from a small caravan he passes by. After all, Hatake Kakashi is just one of many in this world who has lost an eye, and more.

His uniform gets tossed into the first night's campfire, just another remnant of his ties that disappears into smoke. He opts for a tight black shirt (long sleeved, to cover up his ANBU tattoo) and black pants similar to his old ones.

He can't bring himself to dye his hair, because it's a stinging reminder of the disappointment that his father would have felt were he still alive. He deserves that, so instead, he switches from his trademark gravity-defying hairtyle to a scruffy ponytail at the back of his head. Of course, his hair never quite behaves the way he wants it to, so half the time his silver locks spring from the hair tie and fall back toward his face. It works, though, so Kakashi gives up on trying to fully tame his hair.

He trades his mask for an earthy green scarf he picks up a couple of towns beyond Konoha. It never quite stays in place like the mask did, so to compensate, he becomes accustomed to walking with his shoulders stiff and hunched and his chin tucked down towards his chest. He wears the headband bearing his mark as a missing nin around his neck under the scarf, alway hidden from sight.

4 days after he abandons his village, he looks at his reflection and doesn't recognize the man staring back at him. It's terrifying and yet so freeing, all at once.

* * *

They catch up to him on the 8th day.

* * *

 **a/n: Kakashi is 22 here, based off the Naruto Wiki and some primitive calculations.**

 **Will be updating sporadically. (crosses fingers)** **Let me know what you think!**


	2. Bloodlust

**_An early update, because I know I won't be able to write next week. This is my first time writing a Naruto fic, so let me know if I used any terminology incorrectly. Enjoy!_**

* * *

The whir of a kunai through the trees alerts him to his pursuers' position long after he senses them coming. It's easy enough to dodge, because it's simply a warning shot, not meant to harm; rather, it's to let him know of the confrontation about to happen.

"Kakashi," a familiar voice calls from behind him.

He turns to see Genma, wary eyes and resolute posture, stepping out from the forest and onto the dusty road he has been travelling on. Gai—who, for once, is unnervingly silent and serious, with a gaze that Kakashi has only seen a handful of times before—and Tenzo, who simply stares with that wide, empty-but-not gaze of his, flank the tokubetsu jounin.

"Kakashi," Genma repeats, the faintest of pleas in his voice, "The Hokage is willing to consider these past few days as a simple vacation in exchange for your immediate voluntary return to the village."

A gentle breeze that betrays the tension in the air comes to life around them, and Kakashi doesn't speak until it dies down into whispers.

"…And if I don't?" He questions, voice raspy with the burden of grief and self-hatred. It's rhetorical, of course, because he knows the answer, has known it since he locked his front door eight days ago.

Genma breathes softly through his nose, eyes narrowed and teeth clenched around the senbon in his mouth. It's obvious that he can see the resolve in his soon-to-be former comrade's eyes.

"If you don't," he grounds out, "Hokage-sama will have no choice but to declare you a missing-nin on charges of abandoning Konoha, and assign a bounty on your head in Konoha's bingo book."

Instead of answering verbally, Kakashi simply accepts the sharp intakes of breath that resound through the air when he lifts his scarf to reveal the headband underneath and the slash that mars the symbol he once proudly bore. Genma sighs tiredly, resignation radiating from his entire body, but Gai and Tenzo leap forward with simultaneous protests of "Kakashi!" and "Senpai!"

A blur of his arm, and two kunai plant themselves in the ground before their feet. It's a warning, a simple of acknowledgement of the warning they'd first given to him. However, his friends—former friends, because after this they will hate him if they don't already—ignore it, and after a brief nod from Genma, all three rush in at once.

A predictable kick from Gai.

An easily dodged senbon thrown by Genma.

A rush of branches burned away by a simple katon.

He takes care of Tenzo first, because he's the easiest to target and Kakashi knows from experience what a hindrance his mokuton can be. All it takes is a swift chop to the neck while as he distracts the other two with an earth shattering doton. The branches tugging at his clothing fall limp to the ground, useless without the consciousness of their commander.

Gai lets out a shout that conveys all of his anger, betrayal, and hurt all at once. Genma grits his teeth and swiftly moves in to paralyze him with some well-placed senbon.

For a while, all Kakashi knows are the thud of bodies colliding and the clink of kunai meeting senbon.

The longer the ensuing fight continues, the more crushing guilt wells up within him. He can't stop, can't give in and go back to the village that can never be home again, but he hates this feeling of treating friends as enemies. But he doesn't have another choice.

So Kakashi runs, and gives in to his inner turmoil. He lets his grief control him, lets it lose to do the damage he can't do without it. All he can see from within his bubble of mourning are flashes of crimson, and more crimson, and more.

Rustle of cloth, stretching with a kick.

Scent of metal and blood.

As always, the sun beats down.

* * *

When it finally subsides, when his consciousness finally regains control, he finds that his shaking hands are once more covered in the blood of his friends.

"No," he whispers to unconscious ears, "Not again. Never again."

He frantically heals the gash in Genma's side and the gaping hole in Gai's shoulder, more and more precious blood staining his hands. This wasn't what he meant to do. He doesn't want anymore friends to fall because of his weaknesses. With a quick glance at Tenzo—who is simply unconscious and untouched by Kakashi's grieving rampage—he continues to focus his chakra into saving his friends. He doesn't relax until the blood stops flowing and the barest hints of color return to their previously pallid faces. Ignoring the blood that drips from a wide gash on his forehead and dyes his gray eyepatch, he allows himself a moment to place two fingers on all of their necks to confirm the steady pulse of life. And then he runs like the coward he is.

The forest that lines the road—now stained with blood and sweat—closes in around him.

* * *

A few towns later, when he hears whispers of _Copy Nin_ and _traitor_ and _bingo book_ ,a ray of relief momentarily strikes through the cloud of neverending grief. The news of his condemnation is also proof of his former friends' lives, and he's grateful for it.

* * *

The weather continues to be at odds with the depression and hatred that storm up inside him as he meanders his way along the Land of Fire's eastern interior, then its southern coast. The sun perpetually beats down on his back during the day, and the breeze that carries the smell of the ocean does nothing to relax him. Instead, the unfamiliar saltiness makes him yearn for the scent of aging wood and rustling leaves, if only briefly. _Can't go back_ , is the mantra he ingrains in himself whenever the longing surfaces, and instead finds a nearby river to wash his friends' blood from stained hands.

He never stays in one place for long, always moving from town to town, city to city. He's always running away, running from the ghost of his home, because there's nothing else for him to do.

And then, oddly enough, he finds a reason to stop in a small fishing village hidden by the coast.

* * *

22 days after he abandoned Konoha, Kakashi finds himself walking through the main road of a village he's never heard of, breathing sea spray in his lungs and listening to the racket of locals bargaining for fish at the various stands that line the street. It's not until he finds himself slowing to a stop that the realization hits him: he's hungry. Unfortunately, he knows he spent the last of his meager funds a few towns back buying rations for the road, and those he finished yesterday morning.

The hustle and bustle of the market continues on, but he knows better than to think the locals are ignorant to the presence of a stranger. His keen senses are well attuned to the fact that the locals are silently assessing him, even as they haggle and chatter away, and he knows he must look like a clueless idiot: standing in the middle of the street, rifling through an obviously empty wallet.

His stomach abruptly decides to declare its hunger.

Loudly.

Childish giggles ring through the air, and Kakashi turns on weary heels to face the child who has decided to find amusement in his hunger. Cropped red hair—not quite crimson, like someone's he once knew, but bright nonetheless—shakes up and down in time with the giggles that wrack the child's body. He doesn't seem to show any sign of stopping soon; Kakashi's shoulders droop.

"Genta!" a girl's voice groans out, tinged with both irritation and exasperation.

A teenage girl—who, judging by her dark red hair, is Genta's sister—runs up to them, scowl evident even amongst a series of breathless pants. She bops him none-too-gently on the head, and the boy clutches at his head with a whine.

"I'm so sorry," she bows, shooting out a hand to force Kenta's head down with her, "Please forgive my brother for being _an annoying brat._ "

She grinds the last part out through her teeth, and her brother pouts silently. At this point, Kakashi finds himself standing there, clueless, with his hands clutching his backpack straps like they can defend him from wild children.  
He's not very good with children.

Thankfully, the girl continues speaking without any prompt from him.

"Please, let us provide you with lunch as an apology!"

A nearby stall owner guffaws before a reply even forms on his tongue. "Geez, again, Rei-chan? Your brother's gonna put your old man outta business if he keeps this up!"

A couple of chuckles sound from neighboring stalls and shoppers, and Kakashi feels strangely unsettled as he notices himself becoming integrated into this small market setting with no help from his part.

He shakes his head in refusal, because he originally had only planned to stop at the nearby city for dinner. Cities are safe; crowds are easy to hide in. The girl, who obviously has no care for his preference of dining setting, latches herself on to his sleeve and marches forward, her brother trailing behind her.

"I'm Reiko," she announces, "and this is my brother Genta."

"I'm seven!" he declares, even though Kakashi obviously has made no move to ask. "But she thinks she's the boss of me just 'cause she turned thirteen last week!"

Reiko rolls her eyes, the epitome of teenage exasperation. "I'm really sorry for him."

Kakashi, who has no idea what else he can do, just nods briefly.

Genta apparently feels the need to fill the silence, like many outgoing children do, that he provides, and asks, "Who are you, jii-san?"

His sister groans in frustration and brings a fist to his head once more.

"OW! What! Why'd you hit me again?!"

"Because, moron, he's obviously not old! Don't be rude!"

Genta stares up at him in confusion. "But his hair's gray, like grandpa's! And all the other fisherman jii-sans!"

The scarf he wears muffles the snort that escapes him, but the siblings notice it regardless. It gets a smile out of Reiko, and an indignant, "So how old _are_ you?" from Genta.

"Older than you, younger than your jii-chan," he supplies quietly, feeling the need to humor them a bit. They're the first he's held conversation with in a while, and he feels reluctantly grateful they've drawn him into their little circle.

"That's no answer!" Genta rages, even as his sister grins at the reply.

Three more minutes of relentless queries later, they stop in front of a small restaurant. A little wooden board simply names it as _Restaurant_ , and through the glass windows he sees a smattering of chairs and tables, some matching sets and some not, and empty of customers. It looks like a modest place, but he can't help but want to step into the bright, cheery atmosphere inside.

An elderly man, stout and hunched over with age yet youthful in his gait, steps through the open door and beckons them inside.

"Well, looks like my little 'uns have caused trouble again," he grins knowingly, and Kakashi can see the family resemblance in the way the children smile sheepishly.

"Well, I'm Satou Takeshi, but everyone 'round here calls me Kappa-jii! Please, take a seat, meal's on the house for whatever my grandkids have done!" he declares, throwing an amused glance down to said grandkids.

Before he can even begin to protest, he finds himself seated in the corner of the restaurant, backpack hanging off the back of the chair, with a glass of ice water and a plate of steaming food in front of him.

"Fish of the day, just for you!" Satou explains.

"…Thank you," Kakashi murmurs, because there is nothing else for him to say.

The children hover around him, watching him eat like dogs eyeing a meal. Satou shoos them away, grumbling good-naturedly about how they "Always act like I don't feed them, leave the man in peace."

With prying eyes gone from sight, he tucks his scarf under his chin and digs in. The food disappears before he knows it, and he relaxes in his chair just slightly, grateful for the taste of fresh fish and good cooking compared to the tasteless rations he's been eating since he left Konoha.

"Thank you for the meal," he says as he stands from the table and shoulders his bag once more, "but I'm afraid I don't have money to pay for it."

Satou wags a finger at him. "Didn't I tell ya, the meal's on the house! I know a hungry man when I see one!"

He frowns behind his scarf, because surely there must be something he can do to repay the man's kindness towards a complete stranger.

Satou seems to sense his discomfort, because he rubs at his chin before deciding, "Then why don't ya tell us your name in exchange? We don't get much of your type around here, all quiet and mysterious like. Just that, and we'll call it even."

In the face of such a lighthearted request, Kakashi doesn't want to refuse.

"Kakashi," he states after a moment of hesitation, because he doesn't want to leave a fake name in the face of the genuine goodwill he's been shown.

The children, who he's sensed behind the door leading to the kitchen for a while now, come out to say their inevitable goodbyes. Genta races to him, red hair flying everywhere, and his sister follows at a more restrained pace, looking unhappy at the thought of parting ways.

"Aww, can't you stay a little longer? You look like you have good stories!"

"Don't bother him anymore, Genta!"

Kakashi looks down and sees the ghosts of his old teammates in these children, and feels slightly short of breath. Hesitantly, awkwardly, he reaches out and pats both of them on the head—Genta huffing and brushing it off, Reiko looking down at her feet and blushing—and bows deeply to Satou, who smiles in return.

"Safe travels!" they all chime, asynchronous to each other, as he leaves. It's an unfamiliar melody to his ears, one that he hasn't heard in the longest time.

However, the ache in his heart quickly disappears when he steps into the street, because his instincts are screaming in warning.

Half an hour ago, the village had been full of cheerful hustle.

Now, it's just… dead. It's too silent, too quickly, and in a matter of seconds he realizes the reason for that must be the unfamiliar chakra signatures he senses towards the marketplace, too high to belong to simple villagers. He hears the door chime behind him, and senses Satou walking up next to him.

"This silence… it must be those damned bandits again," he growls, a surprising contrast to the jovial old man Kakashi had seen just seconds earlier.

"Bandits?" he inquires.

The elder sighs. "They've been stealing from this village for about two years now," he explains gravely, "Goin' around, stealing fish and produce from the markets and threatening anyone who gets in their way with some fancy ninja stuff. They took the lives of their parents the last year," he falters as he gestures back to the restaurant.

"We're a simple fishing village of simple folk. The daimyo has no reason to take notice of us, and Konoha is too far away for us to send someone to request help. All we can do is give in to their demands," he finishes unhappily.

Bright hair and carefree smiles fill Kakashi's mind. _Those children are…strange,_ he thinks, _if they can find happiness even amidst their suffering._

"I can help you," the words escape from under his scarf before he even finishes his thought.

Satou shakes his head slowly. "Son, these bandits are the strongest ninja I've seen in a long time. Even if you can fight, there's no way you can take on all fifteen of them!"

The children, who always seem to be hovering nearby at just the right times, rush out of the restaurant and grab the ends of his scarf.

"No, Kakashi-san! It's too dangerous!" Reiko protests, and Kakashi can see the grief that has previously hidden beneath bright eyes this whole time come to the surface.

Genta, for once, is speechless. He doesn't seem to be able to find the words to express himself, and opts for tugging insistently on his scarf, threatening to choke him.

"I'm stronger than they are," he replies.

He's been fighting chakra signatures like these since his first C-rank missions, at Genta's age.

He sees the grief and fear in the trio's eyes, and he finds himself almost pleading with them.

"I failed to save my home… so let me save yours."

 _It's what Obito would do_. The thought rises without prompt, and now maybe he can redeem himself, if only a little, in his dead teammate's eyes.

Satou must sense the resolve in his words, because the man throws a shaky smile his way and turns to usher his grandchildren inside, ordering them to stay in place even as they begin to protest vehemently.

"Let me take you to them," he insists, and Kakashi understands the need to see something of this magnitude to the end, so all he can do is nod and follow behind him.

Five steps out and he realizes there's no way he'll be able to reach the bandits in time at the pace Satou has started hobbling along to, so he wordlessly sweeps the man onto his back. He hears a belated gasp at the rapid change of position, but his passenger quickly settles himself and points the way to the marketplace.

Not even a minute later, and Kakashi arrives to find chaos in the form of fish parts strewn about the street and stalls smashed in, villagers cowering behind whatever structures remain intact. For the first time since abandoning Konoha, the hate he feels for his village and at himself turns towards these nameless thieves, who are currently looming menacingly over the stall owner that he recognizes from earlier as the one who called out to Reiko.

He quickly but gently sets Satou down in the first stand he sees and leaves his bag with him. He acknowledges the whispered, "Be careful," with a nod and makes his way towards the enemy.

He walks over to the nearest bandit, at the very edge of the circle they've formed around their victim, and taps his cloaked shoulder. When he turns around, Kakashi slices a kunai across his throat before the man can even growl.

He goes down, the only sound he makes the _thump_ as his body hits the street, and the rest of them turn their eyes toward him at the noise.

Eyes down to their fallen comrade.

Eyes back to him.

"The hell?" One of them growls out.

He takes out three of them before they can even reach for their weapons or form hand seals, arcs of blood following the path of his kunai wherever it goes. He avoids using jutsu, because even as he starts to lose himself to the fight something reminds him to be mindful of the damage that even a small-scale suiton or doton could cause to the village.

Eleven left.

A quick stab to his left, and another one goes down in a spray of blood.

Ten.

A man's neck cracks beneath the weight of his kick at the same time his kunai finds its mark yet again.

Eight.

The blind bloodlust starts to set in, the inner grief reemerging and fueling his limbs once again.

Seven.

More blood.

Six. Five. Four. Three.

The sound of countless birds chirpig, and Chidori makes its way into a bandit's lung, while the kunai in his other hand drives its way into another's eye.

One.

Both hands occupied, the only option left to his adrenaline-driven brain is to dodge the last desperate attack and, as the man stumbles forward with the force of his sword swing, lean in and rip his throat out.

With his teeth.

Blood gushes into his mouth as the last bandit gurgles his way to death, and Kakashi both hears and feels the jarring squelch of both hand and kunai being retracted from their respective victims. He mindlessly flicks the blood off both and spits out remnants of blood onto the ground in front of the corpses.

A sharp intake of breath behind him reminds him that he has an audience.

As he turns around, bracing himself for the reactions of the villages, he realizes that Genta and Reiko have disobeyed their grandfather and are standing a ways off, blankly terrified expressions etched on to their young faces. Satou himself is right behind them, clutching a child's shoulder in each shaking hand. He doesn't need to look around to see the same horrified looks he knows are on every other villager's face.

He understands, because he himself can't help but wonder where all that bloodlust came from. Even during his time as ANBU—dark, mission after mission, eyes on the goal—he never came close to the uncaged, unhinged way of fighting he has just displayed.

Wordlessly, he inches forward—ignoring the way the trio flinches back—and slowly reaches for his backpack.

Then he walks away.

He's almost at the point where village road meets traveler's path when he hears the patter of a child's footsteps approaching him.

"Thank you!" Genta's voice travels on the breeze from behind him. It wavers and still has remnants of the fear he had seen moments earlier, but beneath it all is the unadulterated thanks of a child who has received the justice he deserves, at long last.

Underneath the weight of the mourning and hatred inside him, something loosens at the two simple words.

 _Sensei, Rin, Obito… Father… Would you be proud of me now?_

* * *

 ** _Kakashi is just a lump of feelings, and this point. Mostly guilt, but other things too._**  
 ** _It's been a while since I read the manga, so all my information comes from the wiki (woop.)_**  
 ** _ALSO as mentioned in the tags, there will be no pairings! Maybe slight hints here and there (because I've been reading too many fics by blackkat lately) but nothing concrete._**


	3. First Meetings

_I'm back! I think this is the longest chapter I've ever written..._  
 _Thanks to everyone who reviewed, favorited, or alerted!_

* * *

When whispers of _Konoha's Red Fang_ (he honestly doesn't know if he wants to laugh or to cry when he hears, because _at this rate he'll never escape his father's shadow_ )start to follow his trail, he decides to humor them by trading his green scarf—lingering bloodstains scrubbed away—for a red one in a village on the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Rivers. It reminds him of his ANBU days, which in turn reminds him that even as a missing-nin, he needs to take missions to earn his food just like any other shinobi.

He just has no clue where to start.

 _It's not like there's a guidebook for how to live the life of a missing-nin_ , he thinks, perhaps just a bit hysterically. Then he realizes that that sounds like something Obito might have said were he in Kakashi's shoes, and wonders if he's letting his ghosts get too close. But then again, he always has been the type of person who holds his cards much too tightly to his chest—too closely, that to others it looks like he holds none at all.

Lack of a guidebook aside, he figures he'll start like any ninja does, and finds D-rank odd jobs here and there in whatever village he passes through. His world-class skills are now used to locate missing children, rather than to hunt down S-rank missing-nin. Oftentimes, villagers request something like painting a fence or weeding fields or promoting a store in exchange for not money, but for food or supplies, especially in the less prosperous areas he passes through. He accepts, because he just wants enough to get by, and experiences the same monotonous routine as he once did with the D-rank missions that his old team used to take.

Except now, he works without Obito's boisterous voice declaring a contest to see who could weed the biggest area, or Rin's exasperation when Obito inevitably spilled paint all over her, or Sensei's silent amusement as they ended up scaring away more customers than they brought in.

Sometimes, in his darker moments—which emerge more often than he likes to admit—he curses them for leaving him alone in this cruel, cruel world.

* * *

Crimson clouds that rain blood and a sky darker than midnight inexplicably haunt his dreams as he finally leaves the Land of Fire and crosses over into the Land of Rivers. He always wakes up covered in a thin film of cold sweat, the eye that isn't his—never will be, even after so many years—throbbing in time with his racing pulse. For a week, all he dreams of is the downpour of blood, and he wonders if Obito's eye is trying to tell him something.

35 days after he abandoned Konoha, he feels watchful eyes upon him in a land of flowing waters. He starts watching his back with even more caution than ever, but he can't shake the feeling that he's felt that gaze before, a lifetime ago.

* * *

As Kakashi is taking a break by one of the country's plentiful rivers, nose stifled with the scent of a looming rainstorm, he hears the rustle of riverbed reeds and instantly snaps up to his feet, chin buried in his scarf and kunai in both hands. Twenty feet away, the approaching stranger flails wildly and falls back with a _thump_ , but despite that, Kakashi hadn't sensed him until he was that close, which means that this masked man is not as clumsy as he seems.

"Waah, don't kill me!" he shouts, wildly flinging his arms and legs out in a poor attempt to fend off Kakashi, who has not moved from his spot.

He ignores the pitiful defense attempt and takes in the orange, flame-patterned mask and its single eyehole, black full-length cloak, and wild midnight hair. There are no obvious signs of weapons, but he knows better than to underestimate someone who can sneak up on him.

"…Who are you?" he asks.

"M-Me? I'm Tobi! I'm just a useless grunt, so p-please don't kill me!" he wails, curling up into a ball on the riverbed.

 _Oh he's good_ he thinks, but he still refuses to relax in the presence of this stranger. Kakashi doubts Tobi will be dropping the act anytime soon, so he continues to see if he can get anything out of the apparent coward.

"Grunt? For who?" he probes.

"I- ohh, I see what y-you're doing here! But I'm a good boy, so I won't betray my organization!"

A twinge of pity rushes through Kakashi for whatever poor fools have to deal with this idiotic act. Fools, plural, because this "Tobi" revealed an organized group, not a single entity.

"Why have you been following me?" he questions on a sudden whim, because if this man can come within twenty feet of him without detection, it's certainly possible that he could have been following him this entire time.

"Wah, I'm caught! Oh no, now my senpai will know I wasn't following the mission! Noooo," he groans, hands covering his mask in supposed shame.

Kakashi is getting tired of the farce, but he's willing to put up with it if Tobi is in the mood for sharing more information. In a flash, he dashes up to him and holds both kunai crossed at his neck, two points wedged in just under the bright mask. Tobi, despite the cowardly demeanor, does not react at all, which understandably puts Kakashi on edge even more as he growls out, "What is your mission?"

"Nooo, I can't tell you! Boss will kill me dead!" he whines, even with very sharp blades held at his throat.

"What's stopping me from killing you right now, then?" Kakashi threatens.

And then his kunai are resting on air, the riverside breeze dying down, and Tobi is a good fifty feet away, almost in the cover of the forest that lines the river.

"Maa, you're faster than you seem, Tobi-san," Kakashi drawls in attempt to hide the startled flinch of his hand.

"Oh, wow, the great Red Fang of Konoha acknowledged my speed! Gosh, look at me blush!" Tobi exclaims from the shadows, hands cradling his mask as if to hide his embarrassment.

It's a moot point, of course, because the mask conceals everything that lies beneath it. Kakashi finally understands how people feel when they face him and his own mask.

"Is that name really catching on?" he mutters quietly to himself, but apparently not softly enough.

"Of course! Red Fang-san's tale of betrayal and carnage has spread across the nations!" Tobi exclaims. "Konoha has as many people it can spare looking for you!"

 _Well, then they're not trying very hard,_ he muses, ignoring the "tale of betrayal and carnage" part _, if they couldn't find me with all the dawdling I did with my missions_.

"And why were _you_ looking for me?"

Because this man obviously knows who he is, and Kakashi likes to believe that he isn't _that_ recognizable so that even the village idiots of the world can identify him. Tobi flails wildly again at the inquiry, shadows casting shadows over his figure even under the cloudy sky and the cover of the forest.

"N-No I wasn't!" he vehemently denies.

Kakashi edges closer.

"I think you're lying," he singsongs softly.

Once again he rushes forward, this time towards the trees, at the masked man, but this time Tobi chooses to dodge and dance around him as he stabs and slashes with his kunai. He's strangely graceful, careful spins and flips always taking him just out of Kakashi's reach even as he releases frightened shouts and flails of his limbs.

 _There's more to him than this act,_ he thinks, and adjusts accordingly by reaching up to slide his eyepatch off. However, in the split second that it takes to do so, Tobi disappears without a trace, only the whisper of _See you soon, Red Fang-san!_ in the breeze.

Without hesitation, he quickly summons Pakkun and orders him to track the man, because his instincts, everything within him, are screaming at him to not let him go. But Pakkun, his best tracker, can't even pick up his scent outside of the patch of forest he'd been standing in and the reeds where he first stood, and announces that even those scents are barely even there. It's like he was fighting a ghost the entire time. A chill runs down his spine, because even Sensei's Hiraishin had left the tiniest paths of chakra and scent behind from seal to seal. If that technique truly was Hiraishin, the only reason that Pakkun can't track Tobi would be that he simply flashed too far away for even his ninken's powerful nose to pick up on.

 _How far can he go? That definitely didn't feel like Hiraishin._

The first drop of rain hits his forehead. He flinches, glad that only Pakkun is there to see how unsettled he is. With a quiet sigh, he allows his summons to disappear in a puff of smoke, because if he couldn't pick up a scent before, he definitely won't be able to pick it up in the rain.

That night, he dreams of blood red clouds again, but this time, they twirl and twist and collapse in on themselves just as he wakes up.

* * *

The masked man's last whispers ring true when Kakashi meets him again not two days later, when a shout of, "Woah, what a perfect cave!" echoes through his current shelter. He doesn't know whether he's relieved or annoyed to hear that voice again, because he's been both on edge and insanely curious since their first meeting. He also doesn't believe it's a coincidence that Tobi just happened to walk into this cave, out of all the hundreds of caves that dot the various riverbeds throughout the country.

"Ack! Red Fang-san!" he exclaims when he pretends to finally spot Kakashi within the shadows of the cave.

"Who are you?" Kakashi begins without preamble.

"Noooo, he's forgotten me already! Of course he has, I'm just a grunt beneath his notice!" he sobs exaggeratedly into his hands.

"Drop the act," Kakashi snaps, "and tell me who you are. Who do you work for?"

"I'm Tobi, of course! And you know I can't tell you who I work for, silly Red Fang-san!"

That name is really starting to grate on his nerves, and it's not just because of the way Tobi says it, all fake hero worship-like.

"Please?" he smiles—with his eyes, of course, all fake and no bite, because Tobi can't see his teeth grinding under the scarf.

He's silent for a second, which even Kakashi feels is strange after only knowing him for all of ten minutes. He really wishes he could strip away that mask so he could at least observe the telltale twitches that give every face away.

"Hmm, I wonder if Boss would let me…" he trails off with a hand on his masked chin, and Kakashi gets the feeling that that was more for his sake than Tobi's.

"Let you?" he prompts, hands twitching ever so slightly even as he slouches even further against the cave wall, seemingly relaxed.

Tobi _hmms_ and _ehhs_ out loud, pacing back and forth and effectively blocking the only entrance and exit of the cave. Whoever thinks this man is a simple fool fails to see underneath the underneath.

Tobi pipes up suddenly. "Hey, Red Fang-san? Why did you become a missing-nin?"

Dead silence fills the cave, tension swelling alongside the quiet, and somehow Kakashi knows that this is some kind of test. He's just not sure if it's the kind that he wants to pass. The silence stretches on for what seems like hours, but in reality Kakashi makes his decision in minutes.

"I… I failed my village, and it failed me," he starts, but falters because a spike of loss hits his heart and chokes his voice even as it struggles to emerge from his throat.

It's the first time he's talked to _anyone_ about this, and to a completely suspicious stranger, at that. In the end, he can only add a quiet, "It's too cruel" because he just doesn't know how to explain the guilt and grief and loss and rage that storm inside him every second of every day.

A beat of silence, and then Tobi mumbles something, too quiet to echo in the dark cavern, but Kakashi catches the words _fool_ and _regret this_. He scratches the back of his head—an action that can mean anything from annoyance to confusion—and, after a moment of silence, quips, "Ne, Red Fang-san. If you ever meet people wearing black cloaks with red clouds, tell them 'The sun only rises when the rain stops', okay?"

 _Black cloaks and red clouds_. Kakashi is too stunned by the reference to his dreams that he misses Tobi's disappearance once more. And yet again, he summons his best tracking dog, but just like last time, the only scent Pakkun can pick up is the faintest of trails lingering at the mouth of the cave.

Once again, Tobi's presence is that of a ghost's.

That night he dreams of not crimson clouds but of his own hand carving its way through Rin's chest, even as he hears Obito's strained _Promise me you'll take care of her_ resounding through the dream with the fury of an earthquake. His _I promise_ is a lie, lie, lie, and then everything is bathed in a red light and the eye that isn't his cries tears of his teammates' blood. _You could have stopped me_ says Itachi's soulless voice, just another tragedy he failed to prevent. _Liar, liar, liar_ chant the voices of his teammates, his sensei, his father. And underneath it all, the whisper of a single crow slowly crescendos into the screams of a thousand until they drown out everything else.

When he wakes, panting harshly and dirt buried under his nails from clawing at the ground in his sleep, the Sharingan—not his, never his—burns like nothing he's ever felt before.

* * *

A few more days of mindless travel, and Kakashi finds himself stumbling from fertile river lands to parched desert. He veers south of Suna, because nothing good can come of an infamous missing-nin looking for work in a village full of shinobi. Even so, he runs into a patrol after a momentary lapse in caution, and wonders what he did to piss the universe off.

"Hey, you! Identify yourself!" the first shinobi to spot him shouts.

He's glad for the dusty brown cloak that he received a week ago as thanks from a woman who had needed an escort from one village to the next. Not only does it protect him from the Land of Wind's scorching sun and sandy winds, but it also conveniently allows him to become just another vague traveler among the sands, identity hidden by the large hood.

Throwing his hands up, palms out at shoulder height, he calls back over the winds, "Maa, just a lost traveler hoping to find his way."

The patrol of four stops a good 40 feet away, eyes suspicious beneath an assortment of head wraps and goggles. A woman who Kakashi assumes is the leader takes a few cautious steps forward, sword unsheathed and loosely gripped to the side.

"Way to where?" she asks suspiciously, eyes still squinted as though she thinks that if she stares long enough, she'll be able to make out his face underneath the unmoving shadows of his hood.

"A place that offers food and fresh water," he replies.

He sighs quietly when she gestures for him to remove his hood, but then thinks _screw it_ and, instead of complying, flies through the hand seals for _Doton: Doryuheki._ The patrol members cry out in alarm as a large earthen wall rises up before them, sand cascading down and desert shaking beneath them. He forgoes his usual bulldog ornaments, because the whole point of this is to avoid identification. He'd rather not have a contingent of Konoha shinobi on his tail, thank you very much.

He dashes away, hoping they lost sight of him due to the cloud of sand that his justu displaced, but the universe refuses to make things easy for him. All four chakra signatures chase steadily after him, and Kakashi groans internally as he senses them branch out with chakra flaring. It's in this moment that he hates the Land of Wind with all his being, because there is no cover to be found anywhere, no forest to lose his pursuers in, but simply barren, golden desert that stretches out for miles in all directions, everything in plain sight.

An hour into the chase, he refuses to turn and fight—because he's tired and hungry and therefore more likely to let something slip—but they also refuse to be shaken from his tail. He curses when he sees a mirage-like shimmer of cliffs off in the distance: they've been herding him towards Suna, where backup most likely awaits.

His chances are slim, but perhaps finding cover in Suna would be easier than continuing this pointless chase for kami knows how long. Unfamiliar enemy territory it may be, but his chances of losing the enemy amongst stone buildings and busy streets are much greater than in this straightforward desert chase.

Decision made, he allows himself to be herded towards the hidden village, nimbly dodging whatever weapons and ninjutsu they throw his way. As the entrance comes into view, so does another group of Suna nin. He veers sharply to the right, avoiding traps and slipping past weapons, and climbs up the cliff face instead of trying to barge his way past the more heavily guarded entrance between the two cliffs that embrace the valley of Suna. At least atop the cliff, he will have more space to fight if things don't go the way he plans.

A group of Suna nin await him at the top, but he expected them, and so throws a barrage of kunai their way, if only to momentarily distract them. It doesn't work, and now he has the full attention of the entire western border watch, as well as his faithful pursuers who are hot on his tail, scaling the rock behind him.

He decides to open his small scale invasion with a fuuton, because there is very little moisture in the air for him to pull out for a suiton and using the raiton that comes so naturally to him would be cutting it too close to his identity. It's too hot to bother with a katon, and also, he would rather not have yet another hidden village out for his head on account of destroying its best defense with an uncontrolled earthquake.

"Fuuton: Kamikaze!" he cries out upon completing the seals, a dozen small tornadoes spinning to life around him.

As gusts of spinning wind unleash chaos around him, he swiftly reaches up to uncover his left eye—still unseen underneath the cloak's hood—and activates a low-level genjutsu on the shinobi in the most immediate area. They whirl around, confused into thinking he's anywhere but where he actually is, and Kakashi rushes past them under the cover of one of the last tornadoes remaining.

A kunai comes from nowhere and he manages to fling himself out of its direct path, but it still grazes his arm with vindictive force, tearing through cloth and skin and leaving a trail of blood that flings itself into the dying winds.

Nevertheless, he hurls himself into the valley below, rocks and wind summoned by the border guards flying after him. Air whistles past his ears as he performs a quick henge under the cloak. Without pause, he leaps from rooftop to rooftop, clay dust kicking up under his feet. He sends another strong gust of wind at those in pursuit, and then takes the momentary distraction to duck into an alleyway and throw the cloak into his ever-present backpack.

Seconds later, a nondescript, brown haired man casually emerges from that same alley, bag lazily slung over one shoulder. Kakashi looks and acts appropriately alarmed along with every other civilian on the street when the patrol blows past him to hunt the clone he left still jumping atop the earthen buildings, leaving dust and wind it its wake.

Allowing himself a quiet sigh of relief, he ducks his way back into the alley to roughly wrap the graze on his arm, disguising the ripped sleeve with another layer of henge, then ambles his way towards the market street he had seen a couple of jumps back. He hadn't been lying to the very first patrol, earlier—he really can use some fresh food and a clean source of water to replenish his supply.

As he makes his way to the market through unfamiliar roads, his disguised face smiles back at the few who nod at him in greeting. When he approaches his destination, he hears frenzied whispers of _Kazekage's children_ ripple throughout the busy street. However, excitement rapidly dissolves to fear and disgust and fear as onlookers point out _that monster_ with quick darts of their eyes.

An eerie feeling of déjà vu sinks into his gut as he cranes his head to see the subjects of such whispers. Three children, who Kakashi assumes to be the Kazekage's children, make their way about the stands like every other shopper on the street. What's different about them is the way that two of them glance around with wary eyes, while the youngest—and, judging by the fear direct towards him—stares straight ahead with dead blue-green eyes. Kakashi takes in the red hair— _what is it with the red hair, these days_ , he wonders—unfitting tattoo, and gourd too large for the small body before turning to the most loose-lipped looking lady around.

"Who are they?" he whispers, voice full of a traveler's curiosity.

The middle-aged lady glances at him and does a blushing double take, quietly bringing a hand up to her cheek before lowly whispering back, "Oh, dear you must be from out of town! Well, the girl and the boy with the darker hair are the Kazekage's children. And well, that… _thing_ ," she hisses, part fear and part disgust, "is… well, he's the village _monster_."

She nearly shrieks in fear when said boy's eyes flick straight to them, but Kakashi stiffens as his instincts _scream_ up a storm. This child is not one to be taken lightly. And yet... he recognizes those eyes, different as they are, because he's seen them before. The image of a young blond child's expression when he thinks he's alone comes to mind, and something in his gut aches at the reminder of yet another soul he's failed.

But the longer he stares, the deeper Kakashi looks, and recognizes those eyes on a more personal level: he sees them every time he looks at his own reflection.

They're the eyes of a soul who's lost all hope, all faith, in his own village. They're the eyes of those have lost, lost so much that they've retreated within themselves, an empty shell of grief all that's left in their place. And, like him, this boy's shell is obviously filled with bloodlust and carnage to quash the grief and hurt that is buried somewhere deep, deep inside. _I know you,_ he says to the boy in his mind _,_ _because I know myself._

They stare at each other for a split second more, as if to acknowledge a kindred soul, but something in the child's eyes changes as soon as Kakashi shifts from one foot to the other when a slight breeze picks up. He uses a shunshin to flicker away immediately, because something tells him detection by the Suna guards would be better than becoming the target of that dangerous gaze.

He misses the whisper of _blood_ and the tiny trail of sand that starts to snake its way after him, unnoticed.

* * *

 _FINALLY Tobi is here. Kinda unsatisfied with their first meeting, but maybe that's because I couldn't show his point of view.  
_ _**Should I take a break from Kakashi's POV next chapter? Let me know what you think!_

 _Also, I'll be away from my laptop next week, so I'll try to get another chapter in this week (but no promises)._


	4. Perspective

_SORRY this took so long. After writing in Kakashi's POV for three chapters, it's kinda hard to get into the swing of Gai's youth and Obito's idek and Gaara's bloodbloodblood mindsets. Ugh. I'll try harder to keep them in character next time, but for now I just wanted to get this up._

 _Thanks to everyone who reviewed, favorited, followed!_

* * *

The first things Gai sees upon his return to consciousness are familiar white ceilings, the stark smell of antiseptics and painkillers, and the Hokage's lined face gazing tiredly down at his own. He can't find it in himself to muster up a bright smile just yet because he knows what's coming next, and no amount of smiling can prevent it.

"I'm sorry, Gai," Sandaime sighs after a heavy silence, weary like the weight of the world falls too heavily on old shoulders—which, for all intents and purposes, it does when it comes to this village and the shinobi who fight (or fought) for it.

He allows himself a moment of pensive silence, and then finds the strength to bring both hands up to his face to deliver a stinging smack to his cheeks.

"Yosh! Hokage-sama, I swear on my eternal youth that I will become even stronger so that I may be successful next time in bringing my eternal rival back home!" he exclaims, springing up from the bed to strike a Nice Guy pose—well, as youthfully as he can in hospital scrubs instead of his trusty green suit.

The usual ultimatum, usual promised action in case of failure is not offered, because there can be no failure. Sandaime seems to understand, because he sighs once more—but this time, it's on the edge of a tiny smile. Barely there, but it's enough to lessen the deep shadows on his face just in the slightest.

"Thank you," he replies, simple but heartfelt.

With that, he turns and exits the room to go wherever he needs to in order to officially declare Kakashi as a missing-nin. Gai slumps back down into his bed, having exhausted himself for now. He takes stock of his injuries, the worst of which are a deep but far from fatal hole in his shoulder, three broken ribs, and what seems to be a moderate concussion judging by the throbbing at the back of his head that the painkillers he's undoubtedly on can't fully numb. Enough to weaken and render unconscious, but not to kill.

There's a reason to hope. Hope that, whatever drove Kakashi over the edge—and Gai has his suspicions, of course—will never be enough to truly overshadow the bonds he has to this village and its people.

Gai may one day be able to _see_ why Kakashi left, but he will probably never be able to _understand_. His friend and rival has suffered so much, more than most. He may not be capable of fully comprehending the pain that Kakashi was (is) going through and the feelings that drove him to turn his back on everything his loved ones left behind for him, but he can begin to guess.

 _Kakashi, my friend, I will bring you home, full of youth once more!_

* * *

In the moment that rumors of Konoha's Red Fang reach Obito, he's glad that no one is around to see his momentary loss of control over Tobi's previously infallible façade. He may or may not spew out some angry curses a little bit in bewilderment and lose control, far from the lighthearted and clumsy fool he's pretending to be, because _what the actual fucking fuck, Kakashi._

Trust his old teammate to pull one over on him, even in Obito's supposed death.

After his (very mini, mind you) breakdown, his curiosity rears its ugly head, and so he fabricates some mission for himself about finding a new Akatsuki headquarters down in the Land of Rain. He tries to convince himself that he's doing it for the organization—because frankly there's a smell like several somethings died in the current one, which in this case is probably exactly what it is—but if he's honest with himself, he just wants to…

Wants to what? He doesn't even know. See if the rumors are true, if Kakashi really did lose it and go missing-nin? Meet the holder of his left eye after so long? Ask him to join Akatsuki?

(That last one throws him for a loop, because it comes out of nowhere accompanied by a pang of longing. Which is crazy, but to be honest running a criminal organization from the shadows doesn't exactly do wonders for his nonexistent social life.)

Something in his gut aches fiercely, in a way that he hasn't felt for a long time: sharp, noticeable, _present_.

So he goes. He follows. He puts on his masks, both the physical one and Tobi's persona.

He gets a kunai held to his throat, because he can admit that even as a depressed, barely-there shell, there's a reason Kakashi is so widely known as one of the best shinobi in the Elemental Nations, even more so as a missing-nin held back by nothing but his own rules.

He takes a step back and reassesses, never losing sight of his other eye.

When he "accidentally" encounters Kakashi again, he can't help but be thrown for a loop, yet again.

He waits for Kakashi to call him out on his idiotic mask, because he knows he most likely saw through it the moment he tripped into the open.

But all Kakashi does is ask, "Please?" when Obito refuses to release any information on Akatsuki, and even though the way his visible eye crinkles into the resemblance of a smile is obviously fake, it still stops Obito in his tracks, because _of course_ he isn't the same as he was all those years ago.

The Kakashi that Obito remembers was stuck in his "righteous" rules and regulations, would never have even thought about the idea of becoming a missing-nin, but the man in front of him… This man has the same look in his eye that Obito himself had all those years ago—when he finally saw through the illusion of this cruel world, and subsequently lost all hope both in it and for it. He himself has changed from an ignorant boy into a man fully aware of this world and its merciless illusion, so what's to say that Kakashi is any different?

So he finds himself asking _Why_ without even realizing it, and Kakashi's answer has him mumbling to himself, _I'm an absolute fool, I'm gonna regret this, but I'm doing it anyway,_ and extending an invitation of sorts.

Years of solitude, of not needing anyone but himself, of _loneliness_ after the original Madara left his plans to him, and yet somehow he cracks at three quiet words from a ghost of his past.

 _He'll see_ , he finds himself hoping, _and maybe we can fix this fake world together._

* * *

Mother has been… restless this morning, and Gaara wonders if he should kill the guards outside the house to satisfy her. But as he watches from the shadows Temari and Kankuro leaving the house, she hisses in his mind _Follow them_. So he does, ignoring their fearful glances as he trails behind them, ever-present sand hovering around him menacingly.

This is… unusual, even for Mother, but she just growls and tells him to _wait_ when he moves to attack one of the guards on his tail, which has him almost falter in his steps. Mother never wants to wait. She only wants blood. But something's different today, and this unsettles Gaara even past his usual thirst for blood and death.

They reach the marketplace, with the two in front of him walking stiffly as if they have kunai held at their throats, and Gaara ignores all the terrified and hateful glares sent his way. He has no time to waste on these flies, not when Mother thirsts for the blood of someone greater, just beyond their senses, just beyond their reach.

His gaze scans the market, full of frenzied whispers and not-so-subtle pointing directed towards him. Something is here, he realizes, something _strong_ that can quench Mother's bloodlust to satisfaction like never before.

And then he meets eyes with a stranger; a traveler, judging by the backpack. Green eyes—wrong wrong wrong, not nearly the right color—meet his, something passing between their gazes in that split second, and Mother shifts in his mind, sending particles of sand twitching around restlessly. Then the wind shifts, and a familiar scent fills his senses.

"Blood," he whispers, uncaring of Temari's and Kankuro's sudden snap to alert.

 _BLOODSTRONG BLOODBLOOD INEEDHISBLOOD_ Mother screams, and Gaara shivers even as he sends tendrils of sand to where the man fled with a skilled shunshin.

 _I'll find you_ he swears, _and give your bloodied corpse to Mother_.

* * *

An hour into his hunt and his head throbs in time with Mother's shrieks of frustration.

 _WHERE IS HE I NEED HIS BLOOD NEED TO KILL_

The thrill in hunting this prey is greater than anything he's ever felt before, much more than when he crushed the weak assassins his father sends after him. This man evades his gaze and his sand with ease and it only makes him thirst for his blood even more.

There are others hunting his prey—frantically and fruitlessly, the fools—but he pays them no mind unless they get in his way as he flies through Suna on his sand. Two went down earlier in a glorious spray of crimson when they blocked his path, but even that wouldn't satisfy Mother. She craves his blood like never before, and Gaara is happy to oblige because if simply the chase gives him such a heady rush of satisfaction, what levels of ecstasy can he reach when he has the man's blood in his sand and his corpse at his feet?

Around the corner of the building ahead, the man's chakra flares minutely, but enough to entice him into following. Doing so reveals that he's switched disguises yet again. But this time, only hair a similar crimson to his own and a broad back are visible as he retreats, legs a blur and backpack thumping on his back in time with his rapid steps and leaps. The man glances behind for a split second, and in that time Gaara meets a gaze exactly the same as the first, regardless of the difference in eye color that the henge gives him.

He thinks for a moment that this man is almost like him, but then Mother is screaming for blood again and he loses himself in the thirst.

* * *

"Cease and desist! Kazekage-sama has ordered us to ensure your death if you get in our way again!"

Mother scoffs, and he agrees with her derision because compared to his previous assassination attempts, this can hardly even be classified as a clandestine mission. The Kazekage isn't even trying to be subtle anymore.

He's already taken two of them, from earlier in the hunt. This weak, six man patrol, which couldn't even prevent one man from getting past the walls and failed to locate said man through every disguise, thinks it can take his blood. He can easily fight them, has every right to, because _they're_ the ones getting in the way of _his_ hunt.

His sand spears itself through one man's stomach before they can even fully corral him against Suna's eastern wall.

"G-Get him!" the apparent leader shouts, and the five that remain all rush in at once.

A manic grin stretches its way across Gaara's face. Finally, some more blood.

"Maa, this doesn't seem like a very fair fight," an unfamiliar voice calls from above, momentarily sending a rare shiver down his spine.

Pausing just as he's about to envelop two more men in his sand, Gaara looks up to see the man looking down on their fight, attached perpendicular to the valley wall. A single eye peers down at him from a well-hidden face framed by strange silver hair, but his own eyes are immediately drawn to the red scarf dangling down from his neck, just out of reach.

"Blood," he hisses once more, and a gigantic clawed hand reaches from his sand and to the man, who is already leaping away with practiced ease. The next moment, the hand quickly dissolves and reforms itself into a shield to prevent a Suna-nin's sword from reach his gut. Mother's rage boils inside him, and he's quick to fling away the man who dared to try to draw his blood, a satisfying _crack_ echoing against the walls as his body bounces off and doesn't move.

With his attention back on the man, his sand reaches out once more to wrap itself around and crush him, but several earthen walls blast the particles apart momentarily. At this point, the patrol—what's left of it—seems to be floundering between apprehending the man or focusing their attention on Gaara.

"Now, why would the Kazekage order the death of a child from his own village?" the relaxed-but-not voice comes again.

Red flutters in his vision as the man flips down from the wall, hands in his pockets as if he doesn't have a care in the world, but the thread of tension that lines his posture says otherwise. The scarf continues rustling in the dry desert breeze, and this new shift in position has the border patrol turning their weapons to him.

"It's not the place of an outsider to question the Kazekage!" one of them shouts, enraged on behalf of a leader who probably could care less—because Gaara, of all people, knows the one person in this village who is even less capable of love than he is.

"Even one like me?" he asks, gloved hands held out and spread apart, inviting them to make a move.

So Gaara does, racing at him in a rush of sand without care for the others around him. A lone kunai bounces off of the sandy wall that hadn't been there half a second ago, which then reforms once again into Mother's hand to crush the man's skull. Once again, he escapes death, but this time by disappearing into the dusty earth beneath their feet. A few seconds of frantic chatter from the patrol later, hands punch their way out of the ground and clutch the ankles of two different shinobi, who find themselves buried neck deep into the earth before they have time to finish shouting in alarm. Dust rises around them, and the remaining two shinobi look around frantically with wild eyes.

But Gaara knows that the man will not be taken down by the likes of them.

 _MY PREY MINE BLOODBLOODBLOOD KILLKILL_ Mother rages deafeningly in his mind, and his sand moves to oblige. It seeps into the ground through whatever cracks it can find, looking for a way to flush out its target. However, his efforts are met not with the emergence of a body, but instead the eruption of a seemingly endless geyser of dirty water. If Gaara had the right mindset for it, he would be impressed with the skill that it requires for a rushing geyser to be created in the driest region known to shinobi, but as his mind is only full of Mother's directions and lust for blood, he accepts the man's display of skill as simple fact.

Water splashes all around him, droplets colliding with grains and weighing down his weapon and shield. It doesn't matter, because Mother will always protect him no matter the condition his sand is in.

Regardless of his confidence, the fact of the matter is that the water weighing his sand down _does_ have an effect, however miniscule it may be. So when the man rushes at him, one hand crackling with glowing lightning and crimson scarf fluttering out behind him, his sand moves to block and crush, but is too late to react when the second hand comes from a blind spot and strikes the side of his neck like a knife.

Gaara, for all the power he has, is still an eight year old boy, so that powerful hit is all it takes for darkness to start creeping in at the edges of his vision.

 _No… if I sleep it will eat… it will…_

In the last remaining second of consciousness, he feels his stomach twisting with _its_ roars as _it_ claws its way out into the world.

And then, for the first time in a long time, he knows the embrace of sleep.

* * *

 _Let me know what you thought!_


	5. Declaration

_I'm sorry, I am a terrible excuse of a human being. I told my friend and fellow writer that I hadn't updated since JULY, and she just gave me the worst, guilt inducing face that I have ever had the displeasure of receiving._ _But on the other hand, COLLEGE APPS ARE DONE. So. More writing for you guys, yay?_

 _As usual, this is only vaguely edited. Let me know what you think!_

* * *

To be fair, there is no way in all the shinobi nations that he could have known.

 _Well. This was… unexpected,_ Kakashi quips to himself as he stares into the raging, red, tomoe-lined eyes of the frozen Ichibi, because apparently Sharingan users such as himself can control tailed beasts. This revelation… skews his world view in a way that can be thoroughly thought about later, because right now he has a kid—a jinchuuriki—embedded in the head of a monster to worry about.

As well as the entire shinobi population of Suna gathered around them, including the Kazekage. Which… is never a good sign, ever, missing-nin or not.

All this because Obito's eye decided to royally screw him over and make its ability to control biju known.

 _My life would be so much easier if you were alive and well with both eyes intact,_ Kakashi rages briefly at the ghost of his teammate.

(He would, of course, come to appreciate the irony of that little statement a bit later.)

Then he turns his attention back to the contingent of shinobi gathered around him, and twitches in surprise when the Ichibi's head follows the movement of his own. Many of them look like they're quaking in their sandy boots, but the Kazekage's piercing gaze from atop the towering village wall unsettles him even more than the Ichibi's red eyes.

Experimentally, he whispers _heel_ in his mind, directing his thoughts to the Ichibi as he normally would to manipulate a genjutsu. It works, and the earth rumbles when its rump meets the ground in a dull, resounding thud. His breath leaves his body through his nose in a startled rush of air, even as an unfamiliar sense of _power_ fills his chest.

Ignoring the startled flinches of the other shinobi around him, he allows himself the briefest of moments to give in to temptation, and imagines everything he could do; more importantly, everything he could have done with the power that is quite literally at his feet. If only they could see him now, the villagers who drove his father to take his own life, the hateful enemy who took Obito's life, the masterminds who sacrificed Rin for futile plans. He could wipe out countries and stop all war, and nothing would be able to stand in his way.

The Ichibi roars, as if to vindicate his dreams of power and peace, and this earth-splitting sound derails his train of thought. Fear permeates the dusty air as a few shinobi swivel towards the bijuu in an instinctive reaction to the noise, weapons held high as if needles of steel could even dream of standing a chance against ancient chakra and sand.

The Suna nin assume that if they attack him, he will retaliate with his control of the monster. Kakashi assumes that if he tries to take even a single step to escape, they will converge on him, and blood will be spilled. Even if neither assumption is correct, a ceasefire like this can only last so long—someone must make the first move. He directs his red gaze back to the Kazekage, who has been silently staring down at the gathered from the highest point on the village wall.

"I mean no harm," he speaks, voice soft through the scarf that engulfs half his face.

"Forgive me if I find that hard to believe," comes the reply, tone as arid as the desert around them.

Ichibi, with the boy still dangling limply from its forehead—a puppet with all its strings slackened—growls lowly in response to the voice. A distant connection _twangs_ in the back of his mind, and when he pulls on the thread, feedback comes through in a wave of _hate_ and _kill_ and _blood_ , stronger than anything he has ever experienced in all his ninja career. He nearly flinches with the force of it, and only years of training allow his body to give away no signs of weakness.

"There is no need for pointless bloodshed, Kazekage-sama," Kakashi grits out, loud enough to be heard, as he bows just in the slightest—just because he is a missing-nin does not mean that he has suddenly lost all forms of respect and manners.

A Kage is a Kage, after all.

"And yet, there is no other course of action which can follow the situation that we find ourselves in."

The Kazekage's eyes, just barely visible under the rim of his hat, flick momentarily to the creature under Kakashi's control, and with sudden clarity he realizes that the great leader of the village has not looked once to the child who carries the burden of the Ichibi. In fact, barely any of the army around him have, and the few who spare a glance at the boy himself instead of the beast look upon him not with concern, but with disdain and malice.

Dread grows in the pit of his stomach as grave suspicions and striking parallels cloud his mind. This situation, while not exactly one he has seen before, is much too familiar. A cursed child comes to mind, but with golden hair and ocean eyes instead of dull red and emerald, one who is cast out as the village pariah because of his father's ultimate sacrifice. Two boys who are as different as can be, and yet troublemaker and demon are one and the same. With a pang of guilt, he realizes he had not spared a thought for the outcast in his old home at all—another he could have helped, but was too selfish and gutless to do so.

He doesn't want to know, but he must.

"Kazekage-sama, who is this boy?" Kakashi questions, careful to keep any accusation out of his voice.

After a brief moment, he answers, "I do not see how that is any of your concern, _Red Fang_."

He spits out the title like it's a curse on par with the fate of a jinchuuriki, but Kakashi doesn't even notice, because _he has to know_.

" _Who is he,_ " he demands, but stiffens once more when the deafening roar of the Ichibi echoes his words across the valley.

Every muscle tenses, every eye turns to the terrifying creature. At this point, Kakashi is struggling to keep it still and complacent, because this level of control drains his chakra like nothing else: it is too big, too powerful, too wild to be tamed.

When "My son" reaches his ears from behind gritted teeth, he desperately wishes he were alone, so he could freely fall to his knees in despair. He ran like a coward from his home, but everywhere he goes, the things he ran from are the same. Everything to run from, but nothing to run to—what is a man supposed to do?

As if sensing his weakening grip, the sand around the beast stirs ominously, and malignant vibrations shake the ground as it growls lowly. The child still has all appearances of deep sleep, limbs jerking loosely as the Ichibi begins to paw at the earth.

"I seem to be losing control," he quips, tone completely at odds with both the dark severity of the situation and his own fear. "So, how shall we break this stalemate?"

Sand whispers for eternity, until it is finally drowned out by a resouding ultimatum.

"Spare this village, and you will walk free. Spill one drop of village blood, and the wrath of Suna will be upon you."

Silently, Kakashi wonders if he could do one better—for once, will he be able to save someone, for all those he could not?

"And the child?"

There's no question as to what he means, and he watches the Kazekage seethe, pondering the ever-present dilemma that all Kage—past, present, and future—must inevitably make:

 _Village or family?_

There is no hourglass to measure the time between spoken words; sand roams and swirls without the restrictions of curved glass and gravity. It measures another eternity, impossibly longer than the last, and like all Kage before him, the one named Rasa has a final decision no different from the rest.

"Do with him as you please," he proclaims airily.

Kakashi makes towards the bijuu, but the man who chose being a leader over being a father is not done. He disappears in a whirlwind of sand, only to appear an arm's length away.

"However, know this, Red Fang," he booms and whispers all at once, so that Kakashi is the only one who can hear his next words. "As of now your village is not responsible for the evil you unleashed today. But the moment you step foot inside Konoha's walls—the moment I find out this was a mission, a ploy by your village to steal both my son and my greatest weapon—I will not hesitate to bring the wrath of the desert to your doorstep. Do I make myself clear?"

There is no need for a reply. By allowing himself the minutest chance to save a familiar stranger, he has lost all hope for a second chance of his own. That is okay, though—he got rid of such sentiment when he took up a kunai and permanently branded his hitae-ate with the mark of a traitor and a coward.

Together, man and beast bound up and over the walls, casting shadows over the scorching earth.

When they've run as far as they could from the hidden village, Kakashi finally starts fully prodding at his link with the Ichibi, and after much trial and error he finally concludes that the only way to cage the beast once more is to wake up the jailer. His body and mind are on the verge of collapse from the continued restraining of the bijuu, but he hangs on for dear life, because if he loses control there is nothing out here to stop it from rampaging. Blood trickles from Obito's eye as he meets its Sharingan gaze, and he probes deeper into their connection to find the distant one leading to the boy. He finally sees it in his mind's eye, thick and crawling with years of malice. Shuddering, he reaches out to grasp it, then sends a pulse of chakra down it with a simple message: _wake up._

His ears are filled with deafening roars as the Ichibi finally emerges triumphant in their battle for control, but it is already too late for it. The boy's eyes snap open, and in that moment Kakashi sees the echoes of pain and loneliness that are always lingering. One final roar, and the sandy monster shrinks into a bubbling coat of chakra, then—stillness and quiet, except for the boy's harsh gasps for air.

The first thought that comes to mind is the fact that he doesn't know the child's name.

 _I am awake._

Aftershocks rack his body—fear, weakness.

There is another presence.

Gaara bolts to his feet as he registers the sight of the man— _bloodkill_ says Mother, but for once she sounds weak—who is hovering a few arms' lengths away; silent and watching.

His sand automatically shoots towards the perceived threat, but falls short after a second. Fear shoots through his system like a raging fire, because Mother's protection has never failed him before. This man has made him weak, and so he does what he does best—he hates.

"Who are you," he rasps, throat parched as if he has gone without water for months.

The man's visible eye—just about the only thing visible on his face at all—arches into the resemblance of a smile as he quips, "Who, me? Maa, I supposed I'm your new travel buddy."

He's about to demand what that means when he finally takes in the rest of his surroundings. No looming wall, no brick buildings, no sign of civilization as far as his eyes can see.

"Where—" he begins to ask, but the man steps forward and his defenses immediately kick in.

Sand circles around him reassuringly as if in apology for failing him before. If he were a normal child, he would be comforted by the familiar patterns—but he is not, so he simply takes them for what they are and uses his natural defenses to warn off the stranger.

"What's your name?"

The question comes out of the blue, and it is so mundane, so unfitting of their situation, that Gaara can't help but be knocked off balance. Everything is too _strange,_ because for all that he is a monster and a boy incapable of love, sometimes he forgets that he is just a _child_ , and children do not do well in the unfamiliar and strange.

"Who wants to know?" he demands, face twisting with rage.

"Well, I guess you can call me Kakashi," he replies with ease, casualness radiating off of his slouching posture, hands in him pockets, half-lidded eye.

Gaara, for no specific reason that he can think of, hates it, but still the questions cannot stop pouring out past his lips.

"Why am I here? Where am I? What happened when I—" and at that, he pauses, because he remembers the overpowering fear he had felt when _it_ came out in his sleep.

"Don't worry about your… sandy little problem," the man says lightly, as if it is possible not to worry a centuries-old, gigantic, raging creature of chakra and power. "I took care of it."

Shock. Suspicion. Disbelief.

"That's impossible," he growls. "You're LYING!"

Sharp daggers of sand fly towards the man, but he is already on the move, gracefully dodging and weaving his way closer to Gaara, one step at a time. The boy retaliates with a heavy wave of sand, but he uses a doton to summon a wall of sandy earth, dispersing both the sand and the force of the wave.

Earth crumbles, grains of sand rise again. Skill and sharp reflexes battle with pure instinct and rage. It is only a matter of who tires first and makes the first mistake; in the end, a even a tired child, jinchuuriki or not, can not stand forever against a seasoned, relentless adult.

"Calm down!"

Silver hair and crimson eye fill his vision in a flash, and Gaara takes a stumbling step back. His foot sinks into a patch of rocky, uneven desert terrain, and without warning he finds himself falling back into gravity's clutches.

Strangely, even before his sand gathers itself into a blanket beneath him, he feels strong hands at his back and at his shoulder, steadying him until he can regain his footing. Immediately he leaps back again, and his sand cradles him almost gently, but the other only raises his hands, palms out and away, and steps back.

 _Weak_ Mother murmurs, _Mercyweak_.

For once, he ignores her, because the shinobi in front of him presents an irregularity and mystery to be unraveled and crushed.

"You caught me," he accuses with the barest hint of confusion.

"Was I not supposed to?"

Gaara frowns deeper than he has been. "My sand would have caught me. Nothing else ever has."

"Well, I wanted to, and I didn't know that it would do that. So I did," he drawls, body returning to its hateful slouch; as if it were truly so simple.

A brief pause, and he can't help but speak again: he _needs answers._

"What do you want from me?"

"Maa, I suppose I want to help you."

Gaara has never been so unsettled in his whole life. Why does a complete stranger want to help a monster like him?

As if sensing his confusion, the man—Kakashi, he said, but how is he to know if that is the truth?—continues with, "I saw a boy today, whose eyes were just as… lonely as mine. A boy who, despite being the son of the Kazekage, is abhorred and feared throughout the village that his father protects, a child who needs help. So, I traded the safety of Suna for a new travel buddy!" he finishes, eye perking up brightly as if the previous moments of tension had never happened.

 _He doesn't understand._

Kakashi, as if sensing this thought and the inevitable lashing out that is to follow, sighs and mutters, "I tried."

Then black swirling in red red red fills his vision and the last thing he hears before darkness creeps in is, "Sleep. I won't let it come out, so just… sleep."

It's strange, but for the first time in a long time, Gaara knows comfort in another human's voice.

Smoke trails behind him as Asuma steps into the Hokage's office, dreading the reason why the Hokage has summoned all of Konoha's elite jounin with quiet urgency. Between the recent Uchiha massacre and Kakashi being declared as a missing-nin, he really doesn't think that the village can handle another tragedy. With trepidation, he notices that even Gai, Genma, and Tenzou—freshly released from the clutches of the hospital—are present, though silently brooding in the corner.

Tension is evident in the lines of every shoulder, present on every face, but even that does not stop the gossiping of Konoha's shinobi. The Hokage is present, but sitting quietly at his desk doing paperwork. When he sees Asuma drift to his usual spot by the leftmost window, he puts down his brush and clears his throat.

With a blink, Asuma realizes that he must be the last to arrive. The feeling is foreign, because up until now everyone had always waited on someone else to be the last, and incorrigibly late at that.

All chatter sharply cuts off as Hiruzen stands.

"As of today, there is to be a Kill on Sight order for the missing-nin Hatake Kakashi, more recently known as the Red Fang of Konoha."

 _Oh Kakashi, what have you done?_

The Hokage continues his announcement after allowing them a silent moment to process.

"A missive from Suna declared him the number one enemy, as the kidnapper of their jinchuuriki. My sources have confirmed this to be true—Kakashi is in possession of the village's most dangerous weapon. Treating him as anything other than a true enemy will be enough to start a war," he finishes gravely.

Gai's incoherent bellowing breaks the stifling silence. Asuma quietly takes the cigarette out of his mouth and manages to catch Hiruzen's eye. _I'm sorry_ the weary gaze seems to project, and for once, he understands, because the gravity of the situation is too grave not to.

Asuma just hopes that his friend knows what he's doing.


End file.
